Earthbound
by selfindulgentwriter
Summary: Jasper and Peridot, past acquaintances, meet once again for a mission to Earth. But Earth changes everyone, and unexpected circumstances may change their attitudes towards themselves - and towards each other.
1. Earth

Chapter One: Earth

"That is . . . very unfortunate." Yellow Diamond didn't sound angry, but with her it was hard to tell - rather a drawback, really, as you had no warning before she blew her top.

"Yes, My Diamond, I'm sorry. The Steven and his comp -" Peridot was cut off midsentence.

"Silence." This time the sharpness in the matriarch's voice and the quirk in her lip gave away her displeasure. Peridot involuntarily lowered her eyes, and Yellow Diamond continued, "Now that the galaxy warp is destroyed, you'll have to take a ship. I'll send an escort familiar to the planet with you. You leave in ten hours."

Peridot wanted to say that she didn't need an escort - she was perfectly capable of dealing with the clods waiting for her back on Earth - but she bit her lip hard and saluted, ending the transmission with a dutiful "Peridot out."

The bright light of the screen disappeared, leaving Peridot blinking her eyes in the dim room she gave reports from. She sighed, putting as much frustration into her sigh as she could so it ended up being more a snort. Escorts were always hit and miss, being trapped for a week and a half with some clod on a ship was a trying experience. Peridot couldn't help but shudder when she remembered a particularly loud and clumsy carnelian who wouldn't stop bothering her. Fortunately, the odds of it being any of her previous escorts were slim. The escorts she'd had were much too stupid to have survived Earth.

There was only one bright side to this whole scenario: she'd get clearance to read the reports from Earth's Beta Kindergarden, and could download and read all of them now she was going to the planet itself. It might give her something to concentrate on instead of whichever annoying escort she was assigned on the trip. Besides, she liked reading reports. They calmed her down, made her feel more organized, and inspired her to make her logs even better than they already were.

Peridot marched down to the ship docks precisely on schedule - as always. She approached the topaz who appeared to be keeping track of the ships, who made a note on her screen before looking up.

"Destination?" she asked politely.

"Earth," Peridot replied.

Topaz scrolled down her screen, muttering, "Peridot . . . Earth . . . Here we are." She grinned down at Peridot. "Dock Three. You can take off soon as you like, the passenger and your escort are already there - biggest gem I've ever seen," she added.

Peridot snorted at "passenger" as she moved down the docks. It was a layout she was intimately familiar with due to her other missions, and she navigated it with practiced thoughtlessness. Her mind drifted to her assignment . . .

 _"Biggest gem I've ever seen."_

Wait. Peridot knew she hadn't had any _escorts_ that would be on this mission, and she didn't know anyone familiar with Earth . . .

Except.

Peridot shoved it out of her head and craned her neck to find Dock Three. Now was the time to concentrate on her mission, not unsolved mysteries of a few centuries ago.

She found what she was looking for quickly, and did a mental double check to make sure she'd seen the right ship. The one on Dock Three was nice. Like, really nice. Definitely a cut above the poorly constructed rubbish she was used to flying. Yellow Diamond must have been more invested in Earth's destruction than she let on. Peridot's experience in engineering let her admire the workmanship for a few seconds before moving to enter, fingers itching at the thought of all the extra features it would have.

Peridot _loved_ extra features. She probably appeared more excited than was appropriate when she keyed her access code into the terminal.

The interior did not disappoint. It was clean and austere, the architecture steamlined. Even the thought of an escort couldn't dim Peridot's enthusiasm to crush the stupid clods that had screwed up her mission to the Prime Kindergarden with her new awesome ship.

She paused, pulling up the blueprint for the ship on her screen. She allowed herself a second or two of appreciation for the ship, then figured out the quickest route to the prisoner. Always best to check on one's cargo before leaving.

Strangely, she didn't see any kind of activity around the ship. She had expected her escort

As Peridot had realized was usual for the lapis lazuli, the blue gem was sitting down and leaning against the side of her cell, playing with a stray piece of hair. As she seemed normal and all in one piece, Peridot moved on. She had to flip the blueprint around a few times before finding the path to the pilot's room, but made it work eventually. She grumbled as she stomped along the halls, something she wouldn't be able to manage without her limb enhancements.

By the time the door of the pilot's room came into view, Peridot had calmed down. This mission was definitely looking up, and she even grinned a bit to herself as the door slid open in front of her.

The pilot's controls looked much nicer than anything Peridot had flown, just as she had predicted, with the chair and room matching its wonder. Equipment and architecture, however, was not what made Peridot's eyes widen as she entered the room.

A little off-center, facing the view outside, stood her escort. Peridot's eyes traveled up almost twice her height to where the large mass of hair typical to quartzes began to cascade down the jasper's back. A red floor-length cape was the only other thing visible from Peridot's perspective, a fact that was quickly rectified as the large gem turned to meet her eyes.

"Peridot," Jasper acknowledged. Peridot stared.

That was one gem she hadn't seen at least a millenium.

 _one thousand years ago, give or take a century_

"Are you the Peridot we requested?" The amethyst asking the question looked harried and impatient, but her tone was respectful.

"Yes?" Peridot tried to sound confident, but her voice faltered. Even small quartzes were much taller than she was, something she hadn't noticed with quite such clarity as she did now. There weren't many quartzes in the places she was used to being, and certainly not nearly as many as there were here.

"Do you, um, want me to take you to . . . ?" Amethyst seemed even more unsure than Peridot. Of course. The only thing more intimidating than a size difference was a rank difference.

"Yes," Peridot replied, with more confidence this time. Command structures were something she understood.

"Come this way," Amethyst said, gesturing. She maneuvered deftly through the encampment, and its stark contrast to Homeworld was even more apparent. Dust kicked up by carnelians training in a dirt arena marked by four rubies made Peridot cough. She cast around desperately for her guide, jogging to catch up with her.

As she rounded the bend, the command tent came into view. It was surprisingly plain - all upper-class gems on Homeworld flaunted their rank with ostentatious technology and pearls. Amethyst pushed aside the three-diamond insignia emblazoned on the tent's door and entered, Peridot one step behind.

"Commander." Amethyst saluted the largest quartz Peridot had ever seen, a hulking orange Jasper striped in red. She was studying a map projected on the back wall of the tent, but turned when Amethyst addressed her. Technically, Peridots were the same rank as quartz commanders, so Peridot forwent the salute.

After a second of awkward silence, Peridot cleared her throat. "I'm here to oversee your kindergarden."

"Good," Jasper replied with a sharp nod. "Ever since the last counterattack, we've needed a new kindergardener."

 _What happened to the old one?_ Peridot thought, a kernel of dread settling in her stomach. She hadn't stumbled into a war zone, had she?

" - soldiers as soon as possible," the commander was saying.

Amethyst saluted and turned to leave, Peridot on her heels.

"One last thing." Jasper eyed Peridot up and down, leaving the smaller gem with an uncomfortable feeling of being judged unworthy. "We can't afford to wait for another peridot," she continued, "at least try to stay in one piece."

Something flew past Peridot's face and landed just behind her. She glanced down to see what looked like a destabilizer laying on the dirt floor, and glanced up to see the commander looking at her.

"Pick it up," Jasper urged.

"What do I need a destabilizer for?" Peridot demanded. "I'm not a quartz, I'm a peridot. Obviously."

"Well the last one didn't have one," the commander sneered. "Unless you'd like to follow in the footsteps of your finely powdered predecessor, I suggest you pick up that weapon."

Out of the corner of her eye, Peridot noticed Amethyst edging out of sight. Peridot decided to follow her example, and, glaring one last time at the jasper, ducked away. So she was here to replace a shattered gem. The thought gave her chills, but the behavior of the commander made her angry enough that she warmed up. Peridot _hmmph_ ed as she followed Amethyst.

"The commander really is brilliant," Amethyst said timidly. She shrunk when Peridot glared at her.

"How do you know?"

"Well-she's, y'know," Amethyst stuttered, " _the_ jasper."

" _The_ jasper?" Peridot asked.

"You know. The perfect quartz, the one good thing from a bad kindergarden." Amethyst pushed through a cluster of bickering rubies, Peridot's rank clearing a path.

"Never heard of her," Peridot grumbled.

"She's amazing." Amethyst might as well have had stars in her eyes.

"If you say so," Peridot said skeptically.


	2. Tech Support

"You're still around." Peridot tried to sound surprised – the survival rate of quartzes was quite frankly not stellar – and probably failed. In reality, she'd kept tabs on Jasper. It was something she just _did_ , and she wasn't sure why, but she decided she didn't want Jasper to know. Her head was big enough as it was.

"As if," Jasper sneered, proving Peridot's mental point. Jasper paused, as if she was about to say something else, but instead turned on her heel and strode out of the room, cape billowing behind her. Peridot idly wondered what her escort had even been doing in the engine room as she watched her leave.

Probably positioned herself there for dramatic effect. Jasper had always been fond of dramatic effect.

Peridot sighed, just a little bit. Her partnership with Jasper had ended centuries ago, and hadn't even been long. This mission would be a swift in and out trip, after which the pair could go their separate ways.

She moved over to the pilot's seat and sat down, flipping switches with the ease and boredom that came with centuries of experience. "Peridot taking off," she announced in a practiced monotone over her communicator.

"Cleared for takeoff," came the reply, only seconds later.

The communicator buzzed, startling Peridot out of her studying of Earth reports. One of her fingers moved to push the _answer_ button and without thinking she announced, "Peridot here."

"Who else would it be?" grumbled Jasper from the other end of the line, making Peridot look up. "Do you think the lapis lazuli got ahold of a communication device or something?"

Peridot's face twitched into a less than flattering expression of irritation. "Is there something you need, Jasper?"

"As a matter of fact, yes," came the reply, as self-satisfied as if the clod on the other end of the line had single-handedly destroyed the rebellion and been promoted to an honor guard in on swoop.

There was a pause.

"And?" Peridot prompted.

"What?"

"And what's your problem?" Peridot's professional demeanor was slipping quickly. Thankfully, she was technically in charge of this mission.

There was an irritated grunt from the communication device. "The strategic simulation in this ship isn't working."

Okay, so it was actually a problem. It was odd, too – the standard strategic simulator was automatically installed on every ship, typically in working order. On a ship as nice as this one, it should be fully functional.

"Have you tried turning it off and on again?" Peridot asked.

There was a long silence, about the amount of time Peridot expected one would spend turning something off and on again. "Yes," Jasper replied.

"Does it give you an error message?" Peridot asked, running down her list of basic technical remedies.

"Like the technical babbly thing that pops up when the thing won't start?"

"Yes," Peridot replied. _Probably._ Jasper wasn't particularly coherent when it came to technology, something she was discovering in exquisite detail.

"I made it go away because it was irritating me," Jasper replied. Peridot banged her head.

"Can you get it back?" she asked.

"Why would you want that?" Jasper wondered. She seemed genuinely puzzled.

"So I know what the problem is!" Peridot said, voice rising slightly, then added under her breath, _"you clod."_

Thankfully, Jasper didn't seem to hear her. "I already know what the problem is," she replied. "The simulation is frozen."

"Yes, but I need to know _why_." Peridot was quickly reaching the end of her patience.

"If the error message told me why, I would know what was wrong and wouldn't be asking you," Jasper grumbled.

"Oh, for the love of – you know what, never mind, I'll be right over." Peridot slammed a touch-stump on the communicator's _off_ button, imagining it was Jasper's face. She muttered angrily under her breath as she made her way to the simulation room. The lapis lazuli in the cell didn't react to the fuming Peridot who passed her, continuing to stare up at the ceiling.

For a celebrated war veteran with an inflated ego, Jasper was surprisingly stupid. Peridot was vividly recalling why Jasper drove her crazy, a fact that had somehow slipped her mind. Something she hadn't forgotten was how much the quartz enjoyed her "tactical simulations" and "combat practice." They were games, really, albeit educational, but Jasper refused to believe it.

As she entered the stark simulation room, Peridot was not inclined to argue the point with an intimidating, irritated Jasper.

"There you are," the quartz said. "I was going to come and get you soon."

Peridot ignored her in favor of the holographic terrain spread out on the opposite wall. Computer-generated mountains and valleys were dotted with minutely detailed kindergartens and war bases. She dipped the tips of her extender's touch-stumps into the hologram and swiped them left, a move that should've scrolled the terrain to the right. There was no effect, which was what she'd been expecting, and she turned to cast her eyes around for the control panel. With a few steps she was at the place to tap a few swift times on the square screen. Again, no effect.

"I told you it wasn't working," Jasper said, loudly. Peridot jumped slightly as she was jerked out of her concentration, and bumped into Jasper, who stood directly behind her. Surprising such a large gem could move so silently, really.

Turning her attention back to her work, Peridot gave up on the control panel and opened her own personal access port using her limb extender.

 _Artificial intelligence not glitching, screen registering contact . . ._

Oh, of course. What a clod.

"What's going on?" Jasper asked. She took a step forward, now uncomfortably close as she tried to look at the new screen.

It took Peridot a few seconds to realize why she could no longer see anything.

"Your hair is in my face, that's what," she snapped, using her free hand to push the heavy white mess behind her head. Jasper, naturally, didn't bother to apologize.

Once she had her line of sight back, it was simple enough to use her pad to force the simulation to shut off. Behind her back, the hologram flickered and died.

"What did you do?" Jasper demanded, a vaguely panicky note entering her voice. "Is it broken?"

"No," said Peridot, without looking up, "no, it's not broken. I just made it shut down so I can fix it."

"Oh."

Peridot corrected the problem in a few taps. "When you turn it back on, don't run it on both the highest graphics setting and the highest difficulty setting."

"What?" Jasper seemed appalled. "Why?"

"Because," Peridot replied, "if you do that, your games will overload the system." She strode towards the door, metal gravity connectors clacking against the floor.

"They're not games!" Jasper protested as Peridot left the room, practically yelling after her.

"Log date 3-17-9. I have finished all of the logs left from Earth. The voyage has gone smoothly, save for a reroute around a large gas planet. Jasper has not bothered me again, but she will, because she's too much of a clod to do anything without my help, apparently. There is little to report."

Peridot finished her entry, closing her screen. She glanced around. The room was the same as it had been ten minutes ago, clean and austere. It wasn't a decoration she disliked, exactly…

It was just so _boring_.

Peridot sighed and turned her attention back to her screen, opening another log.

"Log date 3-17-9, continued."

She paused.

"There's nothing to report. Peridot signing off."

Peridot leaned over the pilot's control panel, leaning her head against her extensions' hand. The limb extension's touch-stumps tapped idly, one at a time. One, two, three, four, five. A beat. One, two, three, fo—

The communicator buzzed.

After a second, it buzzed again. Peridot ceased her tapping to poke the _on_ button. "Do you need something, Jasper?" she asked sourly.

"The tactical simulation is messed up again," Jasper said, almost equally sourly, from the other end of the line.

"Did you keep the error message this time?" Peridot asked without much hope.

"It's not that kind of problem," Jasper replied.

"Then what kind of problem is it?"

"It's just . . . broken. I'll have to show you."

Peridot groaned. She could just ignore Jasper, but that would make the gem bug her for the rest of the trip. "Are you absolutely sure I need to come and see?"

"Yes."

"Fine," she said, then added, "this better be good." Peridot heaved herself up out of the chair and began to plod towards the simulation room. She passed her informant, lying spread-eagle on the floor staring up at the ceiling. Despite the lazuli's unfortunate circumstances, Peridot envied her lack of responsibility – and her lack of Jasper. Even back on Homeworld, lapis lazulis were a step above common peridots. Fortunes were definitely reversed now. Having a lapis lazuli in a cell on her ship made Peridot feel a little bit better about replacing Jasper's pearl.

Wait, why wasn't Jasper's pearl here? Peridot knew she had one. Maybe she just liked bossing other gems around.

The subject was still on her mind as the doors to the simulation room whirred open. "Shouldn't your pearl be dealing with this?" she complained as she entered the room.

"Mine cracked half a century ago," Jasper said. "Never bothered to get a replacement."

A _replacement_? Never _bothered_?! Peridot couldn't even have a low-quality pearl, never mind a replacement to any she broke.

Wait, half a century ago? Peridot knew Jasper was pretty sure Jasper was lying through her square articulators, but didn't bother to address it. Instead, she gazed around the simulation room. It looked similar to before, with the layout on the other side of the room – except this time parts were animated. She turned and looked at the panel next to the door, and tapped a few times. It responded as expected.

"There's nothing wrong with the program," she grumbled to Jasper.

"Let me show you something," Jasper said. She moved over to the other screen, her touch-stumps flashing over the terminal. As Peridot watched, part of the holographic terrain began to shift and a group of animated rubies came into view. They began to march, presumably in the direction that Jasper directed them, and were almost instantly defeated by another group of pink gems that Peridot couldn't make out. On the other side of the simulation wall, an animated explosion demolished the landscape with an anticlimactic crashing sound. The words "ENEMY DEFEATED" blazed across the screen.

There was a moment of awkward silence.

"So?" Jasper said, gesturing to the screen.

"What?" Peridot said, "did you call me over to win? Because I really don't care."

"Didn't you see what I did?" Jasper protested. "It was an obvious feint, but the stupid ship fell for it anyways!" She waved an arm at the wall. "This was supposed to be the highest difficulty!"

"Nobody care, Jasper," Peridot said, glaring as she turned to leave. "Call me when you have a _real_ problem, why don't you? Or, you know, _don't_ , because I'm not helping you again."

"This _is_ a real problem!" Jasper protested, blocking Peridot's path. "I've seen better tactical sense from rubies!"

"Whatever it is, I can't fix it," snapped Peridot.

Jasper looked slightly confused. "Why not? You're a technical gem, aren't you?"

"This isn't a technical problem, you clod!" Peridot said, voice attempting to reach the highest possible pitch. "The game is working fine!"

"I beat it in two standard rotations!"

"I don't care! Jasper, I can't do anything about this problem! _Obviously!_ " She ducked behind Jasper, and hurried down the hall before the quartz could follow.

"Ugh!" Peridot ejected, stomping down the corridor. As she passed her prisoner, Lazuli showed the first signs of sentience since coming on board, tilting her head a few inches to the side to observe Peridot's commotion. Peridot latched on to the captive audience without a second thought.

"Ugh!" she repeated. "Who does that stupid clod with her stupid hair and her stupid games think she is?! I'm a peridot! Not a pearl! I bet that stupid clod can't tell the difference."

Lazuli blinked. Peridot glared at her.

"She doesn't even have a concept of personal space!" the green gem continued, waving her limb enhancers dangerously close to the buzzing cell barrier. "It's a miracle she manages to make her way out of" – she struggled for an appropriate metaphor – "anything! She can't think her way out of anything at all with her stupid ideas about her stupid games!"

Lazuli fixed Peridot with a dull stare and then turned her attention back to the ceiling. Peridot stared for a second before making her way back to the pilot's room.

"Clods . . ."


End file.
